1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an electronic imaging apparatus. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a compact electronic digital still camera apparatus equipped with a converter lens.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, there are two-focal-point switching type electronic digital still camera apparatuses equipped with master lenses for the telescopic imaging mode and converter lenses for the wide angle imaging mode.
This sort of electronic digital still camera apparatus has the following camera structure. That is, the wide-angle imaging converter lens is switchably arranged in front of (namely, light incident side) the telescopic imaging master lens for focusing an image of a photographing object onto an imaging plane thereof. When this electronic digital still camera apparatus is operated in the telescopic imaging mode, the converter lens for the wide angle imaging mode is moved out from the optical path during photographing operation. When this electronic digital still camera apparatus is operated in the wide angle imaging mode, the converter lens is inserted onto the optical path during a photographing operation.
As this converter lens switching method, there are various switching methods. For example, the converter lens is moved along a direction perpendicular to the optical axis, and the converter lens is rotated around a point intersected with the optical axis at a right angle as a rotation center so as to be moved.
However, the above-described conventional converter lens switching systems have the following problems. In the first-mentioned converter lens switching system, since the converter lens is moved along the direction perpendicular to the optical axis, a space for storing this converter lens must be provided along the direction perpendicular to the optical axis in order to move the converter lens. As a result, the entire camera apparatus would become bulky.
On the other hand, in the last-mentioned converter lens switching system, since the converter lens is rotatably moved around the point intersected with respect to the optical axis at a right angle as the rotation center, the imaging plane, the master lens, and the converter lens must be arranged along a straight line on the optical path, although the space for storing the converter lens can be reduced. This is because this optical path defined from the photographing object to the imaging plane constitutes a straight line. The dimension of the entire electronic camera apparatus is restricted by the length of this optical path defined from the imaging plane to the converter lens. When the sufficiently long optical path length is secured, the entire electronic camera apparatus would become elongated.